I had a 90-minute call from a client this afternoon explaining why they were not going to pay for the drawings I鈥檇 done for them, as they weren鈥檛 what they had asked for, and this was our mistake and nothing to do with them changing their minds, and so on. As I put the phone down, my ears burning and my head throbbing, I thought: 鈥淲hy do I have to waste my time having conversations like that?鈥� And suddenly I realised 鈥� right now, I don鈥檛.
Perhaps it is a bit like privatisation. Flogging off all the utilities was never part of the Tory manifesto, but one day Mrs T found herself in the stranglehold of the GPO with an 11-week wait for the new phone lines she needed. 鈥淚 only wish we could sell the bastards off,鈥� she screamed (or words to that effect) and the rest, as they say, is history.
Like all creative people, architects are, I suspect, overconscious of their shortcomings. 鈥淚f I were as good as I think I am,鈥� they say to themselves, 鈥渕y client really should have had a better service.鈥� This is where the extreme parsimony of the very rich cuts in. Hard-nosed commercial people pick up on this self-doubt. 鈥淚鈥檓 knocking two grand off this bill as you didn鈥檛 make a very good job of it and we didn鈥檛 really want you to do the work anyway, but I鈥檒l send you a cheque this afternoon.鈥�
When 拢2000 tomorrow is worth 拢4000 in three months鈥� time you sometimes have to take it 鈥� practices like mine are vulnerable to economic bullying, and there鈥檚 nothing like a VAT demand due in two days to make you extend ridiculous discounts to clients that are 12 weeks late paying.
The difference between being worked to death and having nothing to do is two phone calls either way
The truth of the matter is that any architect doing the sort of work I鈥檝e been doing for as long as I鈥檝e been doing it just has to know what they鈥檙e doing, otherwise they鈥檇 no longer be doing it. One way round the difficulty is to give clients that won鈥檛 pay for a good job a bad one. The problem with this is that, no matter how much you might like to, it鈥檚 hard to lower your standards. It is like a good builder trying to do a lash-up. Unless it subcontracts the whole job to someone who knows no better, it can鈥檛. It is simply not in it not to take that extra 10 minutes to ensure that the sockets are level.
I had a very dodgy client once whose idea of toshing a flat up was to paint everything with one coat of white emulsion. It looked OK for 25 seconds, but I don鈥檛 think I could persuade any builder that I鈥檝e ever come across to paint the fitted carpet on the stairs.
When you have a lot of work, you can start charging some of your services as additional 鈥� services you would usually throw in for free. Not out of greed, but out of need. Why pay an assistant to work on a money loser when they could be working on a money winner?
On the other hand, it鈥檚 nice if all your jobs are profitable, but some are acceptable even if they barely break even, simply because your client pays quickly or has good taste. What is not agreeable is working for a scuzzy one and not making any money. However, as in so many creative endeavours, the difference between being worked to death and having nothing to do is two phone calls either way. We can all remember taking on those jobs that we didn鈥檛 really want to do a few months ago, and thinking: 鈥淲ell, if I wasn鈥檛 doing this, what the hell would I be doing?
Postscript
Gus Alexander runs his own architectural practice in Clerkenwell, London.
